Oceans of Trash

How Long Until It's Gone?

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 ~ I have found every one of these things (and more) washed up on beaches.

At least the ocean turns broken bottles into polished sea glass, but diapers.... there's no polishing that turd.

400 ppm

Too Much Carbon

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 ~ Atmospheric carbon is now higher than it has been in 3 million years.

The last time CO2 reached the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere - in the Pliocene era - temperatures rose by between 3 and 4 degrees and sea levels were between five and 40 metres higher than today.

Climate change is a slow-motion calamity, but also an economic opportunity for those who seek profit. Might be a good time to start businesses building seawalls, boats, or snorkels.

Long-Term Leak Effects

A Continuing Calamity

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 ~ Still thinking about water leaks today, which got me to thinking about oil leaks, especially since yesterday was the 3rd anniversary of the start of the BP Deepwater Horizon well fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico.

It started with the death of 11 people, and continued on with the gushing of nearly 5 millions barrels of oil over the next 3 months. 2 million gallons of Corexit, a toxic "dispersant", was dumped into the Gulf as well, with the misleading narrative that it was part of the "clean up" effort. The idea that one can fix a toxic mess by dumping more toxins on it is ridiculous on its face, but that's what happened, and it remains part of the standard procedure that Big Oil uses and intends to use in future. Worse, the practice is cited as a justification for how they should be allowed to continue the environmentally dangerous (and eventually disastrous) practice of drilling in ecologically sensitive areas like the ocean.

Dumping Corexit in the oil-besotted Gulf simply moved the oil from the surface down the water column to the ocean floor, where it remains today, poisoning the surroundings and entering the food chain. It is to Gulf cleaning as sweeping dirt under a rug is to house cleaning. Corexit hasn't cleaned up the Gulf nearly as much as it has BP's PR problem. We don't see images of writhing oil-soaked wildlife so much any more, but the deadly health impacts aren't gone. Corexit inhibits the natural (albeit slow) breaking down of oil by microbes, even as it makes the toxins more absorbent to people and animals. Corexit made the problem much worse.

The recovery in the Gulf has never been what we have been told it was, and policy-makers, abetted by public amnesia, continue to make poor choices on energy priorities. The industry and its political shills continue to insist that we should trust them when they swear (no, really!) that such a horror won't occur again, and, without irony, that if it does, they'll be ready. It's the same old promise, and is as hollow now as it was then. The real lessons and solutions are altogether different.

Frost Flowers

Bizarre, but Beautiful

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 ~ A meadow of saltwater ice crystal flowers, three time saltier than the ocean itself.

The air was extremely cold and extremely dry, colder than the ocean surface. When the air gets that different from the sea, the dryness pulls moisture off little bumps in the ice, bits of ice vaporize, the air gets humid — but only for a while. The cold makes water vapor heavy. The air wants to release that excess weight, so crystal by crystal, air turns back into ice, creating delicate, feathery tendrils that reach sometimes two, three inches high, like giant snowflakes. The sea, literally, blossoms.

With the disappearance of Arctic sea ice, I suppose we'll be seeing more of these.

Climate Change Ocean Rise

Interactive Global Map

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 ~ What would Puget Sound look like if it were 5m higher? Among other changes:

• The Ports of Tacoma and Seattle are under water
• So is most of Sodo, Georgetown and several neighborhoods all the way to Tukwila
• A much smaller Everett is a narrow penisula jutting north from Mukilteo
• Mount Vernon is on the coast
• Tsawwassen is an island
• In British Columbia, all of Delta and Richmond, including Vancouver Airport, and most of Highway 99, is under the Strait of Georgia

How much will the oceans rise? No one knows for sure, but careful estimates over the next century are for 5m or more. Climate change also brings more frequent and ferocious storms. Storm surges can raise ocean levels 5m or more on their own.

Check out the interactive map to see the effect of rising ocean levels of 1 to 60m anywhere in the world.

Lakes and Oceans

Scratching the Surface

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 ~ We know less about the depths of the ocean than we do the surface of the moon. Maybe even the surface of Mars.

We can only sense that in the deep and turbulent recesses of the sea are hidden mysteries far greater than any we have solved. — R. Carson

So we foul it with oil and plastics and pretend that acidification isn't a problem. But we don't know that.

Energy Lies—XIII

"The Administration continues to prevent, delay and obstruct development of [oil and gas] and puts off jobs for another day"

 ~ This allegation, by Erik Milito of the API, and many others like it, are zombies of political mendacity. They just won't die!

We've been hearing this since the start of the Obama Administration. It both ignores the larger truth, and has been consistently wrong for three years.

What occasioned the latest surge of reflexive outrage? The announcement of the proposed management plan to develop oil and gas on Alaska's North Slope. That's right—a management plan. Not an unfettered free-for-all of fossil drilling frenzy certainly, but not a moratorium either. According to US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, "About 11.8 million acres would be available for leasing, including most land projected to contain oil reserves." According to Alaska Senator Murkowski, however, it is the "most restrictive management plan possible." Um, no. The most restrictive plan would be to, you know, actually "prevent, delay and obstruct" rather than what the Administration actually has done—open up the richest half of the entire National Petroleum Reserve.

Quiet Voices

Can You Hear the Ocean Roar?

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 ~ Many since have paraphrased it, but Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus memorably wrote: "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."

In the cacophony of competing voices, are we listening to those who speak quietly, or in more subtle and non-verbal ways?

It is not just the ocean, but the world itself that cries now for an audience. Can we hear?

Food for Thought

Tasteless Behavior

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 ~ For my (environmentally-aware) puzzle fans: what is shown in the picture below?

Well, sure, it's a variegated bunch of mostly small shards of stuff. Want a hint? It's almost all plastic.

Worthy Website—IV

Let's Go Drill the Arctic!

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 ~ This website has been around a while, but it has been freshened up lately because of Shell Oil's imminent plans to start exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska. A sample crowd-sourced advertisement for Shell's "Let's Go!" campaign:

It takes a few minutes of poking around for most to realize that this is not an official Shell Oil website, but a very clever and detailed parody. Like all good satire, it is darkly humorous and all-too-plausible.

Arctic Offshore Drilling

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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 ~ We need detailed scrutiny before, not after disasters.

It's true (perhaps) that oil rigs don't "generally" cause (larger) spills, but oil spills are routine. The spilling of oil is a "systemic" problem:

“Do we have a single company, BP, that blundered with fatal consequences, or a more pervasive problem of a complacent industry?” [BP spill] commission co-chairman William Reilly, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement. “Given the documented failings of both Transocean and Halliburton, both of which serve the offshore industry in virtually every ocean, I reluctantly conclude we have a system-wide problem.”

Sand

Reality in Depth

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 ~ No, not Steve's Amazing New Device, but a microscopic view of what sand really looks like:

It's like diving into fractals. This changes my view of beachcombing.

Oh, and how exactly could one clean an oil spill off of this?

Solar Around the World

Another Electric Vehicle

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 ~ If hybrid and all-electric cars and airplanes can be built, then why not a boat? Billed as the world's first solar circumnavigation by boat, the voyage of the MS Turanor PlanetSolar took almost 585 days:

The catamaran has a solar PV surface area that covers more than 530 square meters with a capacity of 93.5 kilowatts. That onboard power has been enough to lead the crew from Monaco through the Straight of Gibraltar, past Cuba, to Miami and Mexico, through the Panama Canal, across the span of the Pacific, to the eastern coast of Australia, up through Southeast Asia to Hong Kong, westward to the southern tip of India, into the Gulf of Iman, back down and into the Red Sea, where it crossed through the Suez Canal and back into the home waters of the Mediterranean.

It's a piece of nerdy coolness to power a boat from solar energy (and to give it a name from J.R.R. Tolkien) but rather impractical when another renewable energy source—wind—can be mechanically harnessed. Wind also can be converted to electricity with higher efficiency than solar. Still, it is another demonstration that our remaining enslaved to fossil fuels is no more than a choice, and a poor one at that. We could make other choices.

Boat details here.

(h/t Renewable Energy World)

Worthy Website—II

Ocean Currents

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 ~ Following on my recent post of an entrancing wind map of the US, here's one animating global ocean currents:

Unlike the other, alas, it is not current, but historical. More here.

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Other worthy websites:
Animated Wind Map of the US
Want to Get Away?
Periodic Tables
The Earth
Political Horse Race
Be Funky

Paper or Plastic?

More Choices

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 ~ For decades we've been asked at the grocery checkout which bag we want—"paper or plastic?" It's a Morton's Fork.

The problems with plastic bags are well-known, including petroleum and energy inputs, production emissions and how unsustainable they are, especially their waste stream impacts. Plastic is angst-ridden.

Paper bags are little better. They are made of a renewable resource, sure, but use much more energy and water in their manufacture have a higher carbon footprint, and produce more pollution. That they are nominally biodegradable is mostly irrelevant; most end up taking space in landfills where decomposition is inhibited to prevent methane production.

The dilemma is really a false one, or should be.

The Existential Angst of the Plastic Bag

Wind, Wave and Whimsy

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 ~ Our oceans swirl with tiny bits of plastic. The infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, its North Atlantic cousin, and the rest of the 5 gyres contain vast uncalculated quantities of plastic debris that cannot be recovered, cannot be turned into islands, and cannot conceivably serve any good purpose.

Instead, that plastic enters the food chain and in time, we end up eating it. It's a simple thought exercise in sustainability. We don't poison our environment in isolation—we poison ourselves too.

On a related but more bittersweet note, enjoy this 10-minute short on the conflicted life of a plastic bag.

Acid Redux

Oceans in Trouble

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 ~ The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is increasing and the ocean is becoming more acidic. It may be an "experiment" that the Earth has run before, but it's not the same this time.

The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period.

Who Cares About Carbon?

Merely the Living, Really

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 ~ Climate change deniers cannot dispute the evidence that carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing.

Instead, they argue that it doesn't matter because it's happened before. Indeed it has, and that history should give us all pause.

Geologist Bryan Lovell explains:

Climate Change Today

It's Lapping Ashore in Miami

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 ~ Apart from those that think climate change isn't happening, there are those that accept the evidence of it, but think it remains a distant problem that is secondary to more immediate concerns. If you live in any number of Pacific islands of course, you know the problem is serious and immediate.

It turns out the signs go beyond inundated islands, melting glaciers, loss of shellfish, disappearing arctic ice, dying coral reefs and other evidence that seems to some perhaps to be far enough removed from where we live in the US.

Today, Miami is seeing rising ocean levels on its city streets. At high tide, salt water seeps up from underground, flooding roads. The problem is not remote, but is growing, with the flood waters are getting higher and more frequent. Unchecked, the problem threatens not just the natural beauty of the area and environmental treasures like the Everglades, but also the Biscayne Aquifer which supplies nearly all of South Florida's water supply.

Just a Castaway

Plastic Trash or Social Networking?

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 ~ While the problem of plastic in the oceans is real, and serious, there is a tiny fraction both purposeful and amusing:

Over the last two decades, Harold Hackett has sent out over 4,800 messages in a bottle from Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province along the Atlantic coastline.

Every message asks for the finder to send a response back to Hackett, and since 1996 he has received over 3,100 responses from all over the world.

Go to the BBC webpage to see a video wherein Hackett talks about his hobby.

That's a pretty good response rate. I hope direct marketers don't seize on this for some kind of ill-considered promotion.